This selection from our blog is perfect for those new to high level poker strategy.

The Theory of Poker has been the classic poker book ever since it came out in 1999. Instead of focusing on one particular variant or aspect of poker, Sklansky covers all the core aspects of playing many of the most common variants of poker.

If someone only plays 1/2 once or twice a month for a few, they might only be involved a $500 pot a few times a year. So understandably, they might have a big emotional reaction to the outcome of a pot like that.

The most notable thing to take away from this post I believe is how often it is correct to 3-bet a late position open out of the blinds. If you take a look I'm 3-betting with a very wide range with many bluffs, and even some hands like pocket 9s that many players might look at as a straightforward call.

As you can see from the images, I open the button very wide. If you ever find yourself in a game against me or anyone who seems to be opening wide from late position, 3-bet them relentlessly from the blinds! Because it's correct to have a very wide exploitable raise size from late position in most live low stakes lineups, a decent/good player's range will be too weak there to really fight back in the short term even if they're aware of what you're doing.

For my middle position ranges I opted not to write an open-limp range like for the post on my default ranges when UTG. While sometimes I will have an open-limping range while in MP, it's rare that I do and when I do it's only with a single digit amount of hands.

We study what a GTO range looks like so when we deviate we can better understand exactly why and how we're exploiting a given player. And we study 'default' exploitative preflop ranges to know what to default to at a new live table where we have little to no reads.

But when we’re playing poker, especially live poker at the low stakes, we’re often consciously and subconsciously taking many seemingly minute factors into account before we make a decision. It should never be as simple as a player bet this amount on this board, what should we do now?